Текст книги "The curious case of the Clockwork Man"

Автор книги: Mark Hodder

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“Anything I should know about?”

“No. Yes. No. Um-my apologies, sir, I'm somewhat at a loss. A few weeks ago there was a rather daring diamond robbery-”

“I don't remember that.”

“It wasn't reported. Scotland Yard has been keeping it quiet while the investigation proceeds. I had some involvement with the affair, and my subsequent inquiries suggest that the missing diamonds are connected with one that is rumoured to have been discovered in Chile by an English aristocrat.”

“Ah.”

“I wasn't told the aristocrat's name.”

“So now you're thinking it was Sir Henry Tichborne? I'm sorry to disappoint you but, really, the whole thing is nothing but a fairy tale.”

Burton cleared his throat at the mention of fairies.

“An enticing one, to be sure,” Arundell continued. “Certainly young Roger fell under its spell, and decided to visit all the places where his grandfather had travelled in the hope that he, too, would stumble upon untold wealth. A quite ridiculous endeavour, and it would have been an utter waste of time had he gone through with it-but no sooner did he step ashore at Valparaiso than word reached him that his uncle, Sir Edward Doughty, had passed away.”

“So the baronetcy passed to his father, James?”

“Quite so-until, seven days later, Sir James dropped dead from heart failure. Our prodigal was now the new baronet, entitled to all the wealth and estates of the Tichbornes. Rather eagerly, I imagine, he hopped aboard a ship– La Bella -to make his way home. On the 20th of April, 1854, it sank without a trace, and the third baronet in less than a fortnight was lost. His young brother, Alfred, inherited the estate instead, and would have bankrupted it in no time at all had his mother not sent her friend Colonel Lushington to Tichborne House to take him in hand.”

Henry Arundell paused to sip his wine and to nod a greeting to an acquaintance seated at a nearby table.

Burton asked: “If Sir Alfred is such a liability, why are the Arundell and Doughty families so concerned that his elder brother has shown up alive and well? Why contest Roger Tichborne's claims to the baronetcy?”

The older man blew out an exasperated breath and said in a sharp tone: “Simply because the man currently in Paris is most definitely not Roger Tichborne.”

The king's agent looked surprised. “He isn't? That's not what Lady Henriette-Felicite says. Surely you don't doubt a mother's recognition of her own son?”

“I do, absolutely!”

“On what grounds?”

“On grounds that the dowager is on death's doorstep and is desperate for her lost son's return; on grounds that she's almost entirely deaf and blind; on grounds that Roger Tichborne always, without exception, wrote to his mother in French, yet the man currently posing as him wrote to her in English-and very, very bad English to boot-and on grounds that his handwriting is entirely different.”

“A man's handwriting can change over the course of a decade.”

“Can a man forget how to spell?”

“Hmm,” Burton grunted.

The waiter arrived with their food and for a few minutes the men ate in silence.

“So Sir Roger Tichborne-” Burton began.

“The Claimant,” Arundell snapped. “I'll not honour him with the name Tichborne until he's demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt that he is who he says he is.”

“Very well then, the Claimant-he's still in Paris?”

“Yes. Apparently he has a scalp infection and is being treated by a doctor, though he's expected at Tichborne House during the course of the coming week. I fear he means to eject Colonel Lushington.”

“I would like to be there when he arrives. Could you arrange it?”

Arundell looked Burton in the eye. “If you go as representative of the Arundell and Doughty families, yes. My question is: can I depend on you to act in our interests? You and I don't have a good history, Burton, and my wife would have a hysterical fit if she found out I'd drawn you into the affair.”

“It was the prime minister who drew me into the affair, sir, and what you can depend on is that I will do my utmost to get to the truth of the matter, whatever it may be.”

Arundell pushed the food on his plate around with his fork, then sighed and said: “Fair enough. I'll get a message to Lushington. He's a dependable sort, if a little long-winded in manner, and will give you whatever assistance you need. When do you intend to go?”

“Tomorrow afternoon.”

“Good. You'll definitely be there before the Claimant arrives. In addition to the colonel and Sir Alfred, there are a couple of other people at the house you should be aware of. The first is Doctor Jankyn, the family physician. He belongs to an unbroken line of medical practitioners who've been associated with the Tichbornes since the year dot, and he's currently nursing Sir Alfred through some sort of nervous complaint.”

“Related to his brother's return?”

“I don't know. The second person is Andrew Bogle, an old Jamaican who served as butler to Sir Edward Doughty and who now works in that same capacity for Sir Alfred. Both men knew Roger Tichborne before he left for South America.”

With that, Henry Arundell had little more to tell Burton, so the two men finished their meal and Isabel's father took his leave.

The king's agent retired to the smoking room and there fell in with Samuel Baker and John Petherick from the Royal Geographical Society. They were bluff, hearty, bushy-bearded men, whose plan to go in search of Henry Morton Stanley by following the course of the Nile from Cairo to its source struck Burton as naive and overly ambitious. The warring tribes around the upper reaches of the great river had so far prevented any such penetration into the heart of Africa.

“It can't be done,” he told them.

“We'll see, Sir Richard. We'll see!” Baker replied, with a smile and a slap to Burton's shoulder.

The three of them discussed the matter for an hour or so before the two would-be rescuers took their leave of the more experienced man. Burton shook his head.

“The bloody fools are going to their deaths,” he muttered.

He swallowed his drink and turned to leave only to find himself facing another member of the RGS. It was Richard Spruce, a botanist, author of The Hepaticae of the Amazon and the Andes of Peru and Ecuador; a man who knew South America extremely well.

“Ah, Spruce!” the king's agent enthused. “Just the man! Would you allow me to buy you a tipple? I have an ulterior motive, mind-I want to grill you about Brazil and Chile.”

Spruce acceded, and, for half an hour, Burton questioned him about black diamonds and the mythical Cherufe. Spruce just shrugged and declared that there were no diamonds in that part of the world and he'd never heard of any prehistoric reptilian civilisation. He then turned the subject to his ongoing work with the Eugenicists to solve the great Irish famine, and talked with such obsessive zeal that Burton began to feel uncomfortable, sensing that he was in the presence of a fanatic.

“The seeds my fellows and I have developed are already growing!” Spruce raved. “You should see them! They've sprouted into massive plants! Huge, Burton, huge! And they're pollinating far earlier than we'd anticipated!”

He banged a fist onto the bar, causing glasses to rattle along its length.

“It's just the beginning! Soon we'll be cultivating plants that'll perform specific functions in society in much the same way as machines do! Imagine a factory that was actually a plant! Imagine if we could grow our industrial infrastructure from seeds!”

Burton, whose encounters with Charles Darwin and Francis Galton, and, more recently, with Sir Charles Babbage, had made him extremely wary of such propositions, gave an excuse and departed in haste. There was, he reflected, something quite unnerving about Richard Spruce.

T he next morning, Algernon Swinburne called at 14 Montagu Place and was ushered through the house by Mrs. Angell, into the yard, and to the garage beyond. Inside, he found Sir Richard Francis Burton, who was applying oil to his rotorchair's many moving parts.

“I say! What happened to your beard?” the diminutive poet enquired.

“Vanity happened,” Burton admitted. “I got tired of seeing that forked bird's nest in the mirror.”

“You look younger, but no less barbaric. Are you feeling better? You're still skinny and yellowish.”

“I'm through the worst of it, Algy, and feeling stronger by the day. What have you been up to? Here, hold this.”

“What is it?”

“The flywheel. I want to lubricate the bearings.”

“Ah.” Swinburne sighed. “I know a rather fetching young doxy who does something similar. You'd like her.”

Burton clicked his tongue disapprovingly and said: “Then my question is answered. It's quite apparent what you've been up to.”

The poet adopted a wounded expression and objected: “I've been writing, too! As a matter of fact, my latest efforts have caused quite a stir.”

“So I read. The Empire is calling you a genius.”

“Yes, but the Times is calling me a deviant.”

“It's hardly surprising. Your poetry is somewhat-shall we say– florid? Here, give me that back.”

Swinburne handed over the flywheel and watched as his friend fitted it into its housing.

“ Filthy was the word the Times used. Are you preparing it for a flight or just tinkering?”

“I'm flying out to Hampshire this afternoon.”

“What's there?”

“Tichborne House.”

“What! What!” Swinburne cried, twitching and jerking like a maniac. “Surely you haven't got yourself mixed up in that business!”

Burton picked up a cloth and wiped oil from his hands.

“I'm afraid so. There's a remote possibility that the Francois Garnier Collection is involved, too.”

“Eh? The Fra-What? How? You mean Brunel-? What?”

“Really, Algy, you're the most incomprehensible poet I've ever met! But to answer the question you haven't managed to ask: no, I don't think the Steam Man has anything to do with the Tichborne case. However, I do suspect that whoever stole the diamonds from right under his mechanical nose might have some connection with the returning heir.”

“Ah ha! So there's a safe cracker among the Tichborne clan!”

“It's not impossible. All I know thus far is-”

Burton went on to recount the legends concerning the three Eyes of Naga. He then told the history of the Tichborne family.

“So you see,” he concluded, “I'm working on the premise that perhaps Sir Henry found the South American Eye-even though Henry Arundell pooh-poohs the suggestion-and that someone in or connected in some way with the family might now have possession of the Choir Stones, too.”

“Which just leaves the African diamond,” Swinburne commented.

“Indeed.”

“Which strikes me as peculiar.”

“Peculiar?”

“It gave rise to the Nile.”

“According to myth, yes. What are you getting at?”

“Just that you and Speke went hunting for the source of that river, then Henry Stanley did, and now his expedition has disappeared.”

Burton frowned. “His expedition has disappeared because he was stupid enough to fly over the region in these-” He rapped his knuckles against the side of his rotorchair. “Not a single flying machine that's entered the region has ever come out again. He knew that, but still he flew.”

“Yes, but that's not what I meant.”

“What, then?”

“Come into the house with me. Have a cigar. I want you to tell me a story.”

The king's agent considered his friend for a moment, then shrugged, nodded, put away his tools, and led Swinburne from the garage.

Minutes later, they were relaxing in the study.

Burton took a sip of port and said: “What do you want to know?”

“About your expedition with Speke. If I remember rightly, you reached Lake Tanganyika by March of ’58. What happened next?”

“Illness, mainly. We'd heard there was a port town named Ujiji on the eastern shore of the lake where we could establish a base camp, but when we got there we found that it consisted of nothing but a few decrepit beehive-shaped huts and a pitiful market-”

Captain Richard Francis Burton was blind.

Lieutenant John Hanning Speke's face had become paralysed down one side.

Both men were too weak to walk more than a few paces.

For two weeks, they rested in a half-derelict domed hut and ate the boiled rice brought to them by their guide, Sidi Bombay. They lay limply on their cots, crushed by the oppressive heat, and suffered and slept and moaned and vomited and lapsed in and out of consciousness.

“Mary, mother of God, is it worth it, Dick?” Speke whispered.

“It has to be. We're almost there, I'm sure of it. You heard what Bombay told me this morning.”

“No, I didn't. I was out of my mind with fever.”

“The locals claim a river flows northward out of the lake. If we can get a dhow onto her, I'm certain we'll find ourselves floating down the Nile, straight past the warring tribes, and all the way to Cairo.”

Burton clung on to that conviction and used it to slowly haul himself out of the pit of ill health. Infuriatingly, Speke, who was far less driven than his commanding officer, nevertheless made a much speedier recovery, and was soon strolling around during the short spells of cool morning and evening air, bathing in the lake, and shopping in the little market, where he would appear with a native holding an umbrella over him, with strings of trading beads slung over his arm, and with smoked-glass spectacles protecting his eyes.

He was a strange, restless, self-conscious man. Tall and thin, long-bearded and watery-eyed, hesitant in manner and stuttering in conversation, he only ever seemed at peace with himself when he was hunting.

Lieutenant Speke shot at everything. He put bullets into hippos and antelope, giraffes and lions, elephants and rhinos. He killed gleefully and indiscriminately, and had left a seven-hundred-mile-long trail of corpses all the way back to Zanzibar.

Even so, as the days dragged on in Ujiji, he became maddened by the shimmering landscape, the unending profusion of dried-out grass and trees, the hard, dusty, cracked earth.

“Brown! Nothing but blasted brown! Not a spot of green anywhere! I can't bear it. Even hunting is tedious in this damned hellhole. Can't we move on? I feel like I'm losing my mind!”

“Soon, John, but I need a little more time,” answered Burton, whose sight was still impaired, his legs still paralysed.

Speke groaned. “Will you at least permit me to take a canoe across the lake with Sidi Bombay? We know Sheikh Hamed is over there and he has a dhow. Maybe I can talk him into hiring it out to us? And he might know something about the northern river.”

“It's too dangerous. The rainy season is due. They say it causes violent storms on the water.”

Speke, though, became fixated upon the idea and eventually persuaded Burton to allow the excursion. He departed on the 3rd of March and was gone almost a month, during which time Burton dosed himself morning, noon, and night with Saltzmann's Tincture and gave himself up to what he would later describe as “ dreaming of things past, visioning things present. ”

By the time the lieutenant returned, Burton was feeling a little better. His ophthalmia had cleared and he was able to totter around unassisted.

“The river?” he asked, eagerly.

“It's called the Rusizi. Hamed gave me an absolute assurance that it flows out of the lake. The tribes in the region are friendly and will guide us to it.”

Burton punched a fist into the air. “Allah be praised! Did you secure the dhow?”

“He'll loan it to us three months from now at a cost of five hundred dollars.”

“What? That's ridiculous! Didn't you barter?”

“I lack the language skills, Dick.”

Burton seethed. What a waste of time and resources! Damn Speke's incompetence!

The lieutenant should have been mortified by his failure to get the dhow, yet he wasn't. Instead, his manner became odd, distant-almost furtive.

A few days later, he approached Burton and said: “I say, old chap, would you mind helping me to put my diaries into order? You know how confounded amateurish I am when it comes to writing.”

“Certainly,” answered Burton, and the two men settled at a makeshift table with Speke's journals open before them.

They went through the notebooks, and Burton pointed out where a more extensive description would be beneficial, where cross references could be inserted, and, very frequently, where spelling mistakes and grammatical errors required correction.

Then he turned a page and found a map sketched out.

“What's this?”

“It's the northern shore of the lake.”

“You mean this lake? Tanganyika?”

“Yes.”

“But John-what's this horseshoe of mountains in the north?”

“In my opinion, they're the Mountains of the Moon.”

“That's not possible. All the natives say the Mountains of the Moon are far away to the northeast of here.”

“Sheik Hamed's people say otherwise. They've been to the northern shore, in the shadow of that range.”

“And the Rusizi? Do you mean to suggest that it flows out of Tanganyika and up into the mountains?”

Speke shifted in his seat. “I don't know,” he muttered.

“Besides, if they're as big as legend suggests, surely we'd be able to see the distant peaks from here?”

“Maybe the land slopes down beyond the northern shore, so the peaks are actually below the horizon?”

Burton could barely believe his ears. What on earth was his companion babbling about?

He turned the page and they continued to work, but Speke rapidly lost interest and said: “That's enough for now. I'm going for a walk.”

He left the hut and, some minutes later, Burton heard rifle shots-more animals falling to his companion's bloodlust.

The increasingly humid, sweaty days passed.

With his health continuing to improve, Burton decided to risk a foray onto the lake. He borrowed two large canoes from the Ujiji natives and instructed Sidi Bombay to have them loaded with supplies and crewed by the strongest oarsmen.

“Aren't you too sick for this?” Speke asked.

“I'm fine. And we must establish for certain which way the Rusizi flows. Hearsay is not enough. I have to see it with my own eyes.”

“I think we should wait until you're stronger.”

Burton ground his teeth in vexation. “Dash it all, John! Why are you suddenly so reluctant to see this expedition through?”

“I'm not!” Speke protested. His attitude, though, remained surly as the two canoes were launched, with Burton in the first and him in the second.

On choppy water, the crew paddled northward.

The weather broke. They were by turns soaked by torrential rain, baked by ferocious sun, and battered by downpours again.

They put ashore at a village named Uvira, where the oarsmen from Ujiji mutinied.

“They have much fear,” Sidi Bombay explained. “People in village say we be killed if we go more north. Tribes there very bad. Always make war.”

Then came a terrible blow: “Boss man here say Rusizi come in lake, not go out.”

“Sheikh Hamed claimed otherwise!” Burton cried.

Sidi Bombay shook his head. “No, no. Mr. Speke he no understand what Sheikh Hamed say.”

Despondency settled over Burton.

The lieutenant avoided him.

The explorers turned around and returned to Ujiji. From there, they trudged back inland to a village named Kawele.

Burton rallied. He felt sure that with the evidence he'd so far collected, he could raise sponsorship for a second, more fully equipped expedition-and, by God, he'd bring a better travelling companion!

“I'd like to circumnavigate Tanganyika,” he told Speke, “but we should save what's left of our supplies for the trek back to Zanzibar. If our furlough ends before we report to the RGS, we'll lose our commissions.”

“Agreed,” the lieutenant answered stiffly.

So, on the 26th of May, they began the long march eastward, reaching Unyanyembe in mid-June, where a mailbag awaited them. One of its letters revealed to Burton that his father had died ten months previously, and another that his brother, Edward, had been savagely beaten in India and had suffered severe head injuries.

His despondency deepened into depression.

They slogged on over the endless savannah until they reached the Arab trading town of Kazeh. Here they rested.

Speke encouraged Burton to take Saltzmann's Tincture to drive away the last vestiges of malarial fever. He even mixed the doses himself. No amount of medicine, though, could fully protect the Englishmen from Africa's insidious maladies, and in addition to all their other ailments, they now both suffered from constant, eye-watering headaches.

Death hung oppressively over this part of Africa-and it wanted them.

One day, Speke came to Burton and told him that the locals were hinting that there was a huge body of water fifteen or sixteen marches to the north.

“We should explore it,” he said.

“I'm not well enough,” came the reply. “I'm short of breath and can't think straight. My mind is all over the place. I don't even trust myself to take accurate readings. Besides, we don't have the supplies.”

“How about if I take a small party? I can travel fast and light, while you rest here and get your strength back.”

Burton, who was lying on a cot, tried to sit up and failed.

“Where's your medicine?” Speke asked. “I'll prepare you a dose.”

“Thank you, John. Do you really think you can get there and back without eating into our provisions too much?”

“I'm certain of it.”

“Very well. Organize it and go.”

Secretly, Burton was relieved at the prospect of time apart from his colleague. Speke had been a thorn in his side ever since the visit to Sheikh Hamed, and while they'd been in Kazeh, the lieutenant hadn't made a single concession to Eastern customs and etiquette, repeatedly offending their Arabian hosts and leaving Burton to explain and apologise.

His departure lifted a weight from Burton's shoulders. The explorer put aside his medicine and started compiling a vocabulary of the local dialects for use by future travellers. As scholarly pursuits usually did, this activity revived his spirits.

Six weeks later, Lieutenant John Hanning Speke returned.

“There's an inland sea!” he declared, triumphantly. “They call it Nyanza or Nassa or Ziwa or Ukerewe or something-”

“ Nyanza is the Bantu word for lake, John.”

“Yes, yes-it doesn't matter; I named it after the king! I swear to God, Dick, I've discovered the source of the Nile!”

Burton asked his companion to describe all he'd seen.

It turned out that Speke had seen very little. His evidence was more guesswork than science. He'd been within sight of the water for only three days, hadn't sailed upon it, and had, in fact, observed only a small stretch of the southeastern shore.

“So how do you know its size? How do you justify calling it an inland sea? How do you know the Nile flows out of it?”

“I spoke to a local man, a great traveller.”

“Spoke?”

“Through gestures.”

Burton looked at the map his companion had sketched.

“Great heavens, man! You've set the far shore at four degrees latitude north! Is this based on nothing more than the wave of a native's hand?”

Speke clammed up. He became increasingly cantankerous, caused arguments among the porters, and barely spoke a word to Burton.

It quickly became apparent that he'd used up more of their supplies than predicted. There was no way they could afford to make a diversion northward. However big the lake was, however likely the source of the Nile, it was going to have to wait.

September arrived, and they departed Kazeh and began the long march back to Africa's east coast.

The ensuing weeks were unpleasant in the extreme. There were fights, disputes, thefts, accidents, and desertions. Burton was forced to punish some of the porters and to pay off others. They drove him into a fury, and, on one occasion, he used a leather belt to thrash a man, then stood panting over him, confused and disoriented, his head throbbing, hardly realizing what he had done.

He had to push the expedition every step of the way homeward and Speke did nothing to help. If anything, his attitude toward the natives just made the situation worse.

The two explorers exchanged barely a word until, a month later, Speke fell seriously ill. They halted and Burton nursed him as a high temperature erupted into a life-threatening fever. The lieutenant, lying in a cot, ranted and raved. He was obviously in the grip of terrifying hallucinations.

“They have their claws in my legs!” he howled. “Dear God, save me! I can hear it in the room above but they won't let me approach! I can't get near! My legs! My legs!”

Burton mopped Speke's brow, feeling the heat radiating from his skin.

“It's all right, John,” he soothed.

“They aren't human! They are crawling into my head! Oh, Jesus, get them out of me, Dick! Get them out! They are putting their claws into me! Dragging me away from it, across the cavern, by the legs!”

Away from what? Burton wondered.

Speke's body arched and he shook violently, gripped by an epileptic fit. Burton called Sidi Bombay over and they forced a leather knife sheath between the lieutenant's teeth to prevent him from biting his tongue. They held him down as spasms twisted and contorted him.

Eventually, Speke fell into a stupor and lay semiconscious, muttering to himself.

“Hobgoblins,” he whispered. “Great crowds of them spilling from the temple. Heaven help me, I have them inside my soul! They are setting loose their dragons!”

His face was suddenly wrenched out of shape by a ferocious cramp, his eyes became glassy, and he began to bark like a dog. He was almost entirely unrecognisable, and Sidi Bombay backed away hastily, wearing an expression of superstitious dread.

“It is kichyomachyoma,” he said. “He attack by bad spirits! He die!”

Speke screamed. He screamed ceaselessly for an entire day-but he didn't die.

Eventually he quieted, lapsed in and out of consciousness, and finally slept.

Another week slipped by.

John Speke was sitting up, sipping at a cup of tea, when Burton entered the tent.

“How are you feeling, John?”

“Better, Dick. I think we'll be able to move on soon. Maybe in a couple of days.”

“When you're ready, but not before.”

Speke put down his cup and looked Burton squarely in the eyes. “You shouldn't have said it.”

Burton frowned, puzzled. “Said what?”

“At Berbera. When we were attacked. You said: ‘Don't step back or they'll think we're retiring.’ I'm not a coward.”

“A coward? What are you talking about? Berbera was three years ago!”

“You thought I was retreating in fear.”

Burton's eyebrows rose. He was amazed, shocked. “I-what? I didn't-”

“You accused me.”

“John! You have it all wrong! I did no such thing! I have never, not for a single moment, considered you anything other than courageous in the face of danger!”

Speke shook his head. “I know what you think.”

“John-” Burton began, but Speke interrupted: “I'll rest now.”

He lay down and turned his face away. Burton stood looking at him, then quietly left the tent.

After a further three days, the safari got moving again, with the lieutenant being carried on a stretcher. The long line of men-the two explorers and their porters-wound like a snake through the undulating landscape. They seemed to make no progress, seeing only sun-baked grass for mile after mile after mile.

In fact, they were wending their way up onto higher ground, and the gradual change of air did Burton and Speke a world of good, driving the fevers, diseases, pains, and infections from their ravaged bodies, though they continued to suffer from terrible headaches.

Christmas Day came and went. By this time, they were maintaining a polite but cold relationship. Speke's excursion to the great lake was never spoken of.

Desertions and disobedience among the porters halted them for another fortnight. Burton warned the men that they'd forfeit their pay if they didn't pick up their packs and start moving. They refused. He rounded up the troublemakers and dismissed them, hiring nine new men from a passing caravan.

They moved on.

Walking, walking, walking! Would it never end?

It did.

On the 2nd of February, 1859, they climbed to the top of a hill and saw the blue sea scintillating in the far distance.

They threw their caps into the air and cheered.

“Hip, hip, hurrah!” John Speke hollered. “Let's get ourselves off this filthy damned continent, and I pray to God that my blasted headache stays behind!”

“We reached Zanzibar and from there sailed to Aden, where I decided to lay up awhile to recover my strength. John, meanwhile, jumped onto the first available Europe-bound ship. He promised to await my arrival in London, so we could report our findings to the Royal Geographical Society together. In any event, he went there alone and claimed sole credit for the discovery of the source of the Nile.”

Burton flicked his cigar stub into the hearth.

“It was a terrible betrayal,” Swinburne said.

“The worst. I was his commanding officer. It was my expedition. His evidence was so incompetent that he made an embarrassment of the entire endeavour.”

A short silence settled over the two men.

Burton ran the tip of his right index finger along the scar on his cheek, as if reminded of that old, mind-numbing pain.

“Of course,” he continued, “in going to the RGS, he wasn't acting entirely of his own volition. He'd been mesmerised during the voyage home by the leader of the Rakes, Laurence Oliphant.”

He stood, crossed to the window, and looked down at the traffic that clanked and steamed and rolled and rumbled along Montagu Place. Almost inaudibly, he said: “You think John betrayed me even before we left Africa, don't you? At Tanganyika.”

“Yes, I'm sorry, Richard, but it all adds up. I think Speke learned from Sheikh Hamed that the Mountains of the Moon were nowhere near, but far away to the northeast; that the tribes to the north of Ujiji were hostile; and that the Rusizi flows into, not out of, the lake. He then set about convincing you of the exact opposite, so that you'd waste time and resources and be forced to return to Zanzibar.”

Burton sighed. “A lust for glory. He wanted to be John Hanning Speke, the man who discovered the source of the Nile. ”

“It would seem so, and though his map didn't fool you-you're too good a geographer to be taken in by absurdly misplaced mountains-the rest of it worked. Your attempts to see the Rusizi precluded any further explorations.”

The king's agent clenched his fists and leaned with his knuckles against the window frame and his forehead touching the glass.